


for the world is hollow

by darkraigarden



Category: Dark Souls I
Genre: Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt, Emotions, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Gender Ambiguity, Multi, a study in relationships, can be interpreted as gay or str8, depending on your cu, specifically the relationship between solaire and cu, this is the most basic bitch dark souls fanfiction but i had to do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 20:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19857220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkraigarden/pseuds/darkraigarden
Summary: One so bright was never meant to last.





	for the world is hollow

Meeting Knight Solaire of Astora is much like spotting a beacon after wandering lost in the dark. He is warm where everything else is cold, optimistic where everything else is doom. Perhaps more abrasively, he is bright where everything else is dark. Almost blinding at first, and you're not sure what to make of it. 

Standing alone out on a wide balcony, his helm gleams under the glaze of a setting sun, broad back facing you, hands loose at his sides. He must be gazing straight into that blazing orb in the sky, yet is utterly unflinching, so still that he seems entranced by some magic spell. The idea makes you wary, but then his behaviour is almost gravitational; you want to move closer to him, to be enveloped by the area surrounding him; his presence feels physical, palpable, and attractive. 

You reach the bottom step of the balcony, the chipped sword and rusted shield you'd earlier picked up heavy in your hands, and so obviously pitiful compared to this Knight's gleaming sharpblade and sun-crested greatshield... but when Solaire turns to you, quickly-cultivated instinct still tells you to lift them defensively. 

You fondly recall that Solaire does not even flinch from your action; in fact, he greets you, and the smile in his gentle voice is obvious. It shocks you, differently than anything else has since your perilous escape from the Undead Asylum and subsequent tumble into Lordran. Though instead of an icy cold, you experience a searing warmth in your chest. It is a sensation of shock that you welcome. The word 'hello' seems almost foreign to you as it comes from his lips, but it is something you also welcome. 

The sun is now at his back as he faces you, and it spills in an arc around his helm as a halo would, casting his face in deep shadow. His eyes are heavily shaded this way, and you peer to try and see them through the slot. You are comforted by his depiction of your appearance-- _you don't look Hollow, far from it!_ \--, knowing that you are ever susceptible to the madness of the Hollow; knowing that you have not given into it. Others have not been so kind. 'Practically Hollow', one man had said of you. Yet somehow, you feel you can, or perhaps simply prefer to, trust Solaire more than that other Warrior from before. So you find that you are willing to stay and listen to him speak. 

Solaire's statements are grand, and his endeavours seem impossible. How could someone find their very own sun? Your subconscious discomfort and confusion must be obvious, but he simply laughs, confident in his goals. He is understanding of your reaction, yet you still desire to stay with him, for he is much different than the scarce few others you have met. A change of character seems like a positive change to you, as it feels good, and not harsh. It is almost addictive, or even gravitational. 

Solaire practically takes you in; he is a figure you find yourself wanting to be on equal footing with, to see eye-to-eye with, to fully understand. You recall how you were innately uncomfortable with his proclamations just moments ago, but now you hope to actively attempt to understand them, in hopes of understanding him. You agree to fight alongside him when the times might arise, and at last you have a sense of security, a light to look to in the encompassing darkness. You can at least understand why Solaire favours the sun so, even if he looks at it in ways that you do not. 

As the sun sets and you watch it with him that evening, you are able to see his eyes; they are a pale blue, and as they look back at you, it is as if they radiate sunlight out from within them. Sunlight, warmth, and earnest humanity.

-

Solaire proves to be an uplifting presence to say the least, a walking and breathing sanctuary in your life. 

After only a short time with him you are rather firmly convinced that yes indeed, this light is good, this brightness means safety, refuge from the dark where it is cold and you cannot see nor fixate on any sort of light, can only trudge blindly forward hoping for the best. Where there is Solaire, there is light, and where there is light, you wish to be. Like this, Solaire becomes a steady presence in your otherwise lonely trek across Lordran. With him it all seems less daunting. 

He is _magnificent_ in battle, and his faith in the sun serves to aid him with casting the most blinding miracles you have ever seen, dazzling you beyond coherence. He fights with such passion, and such faith! Like he knows that nothing in the world could harm him. His swiftness in helping you defeat the Bell Gargoyles is what truly solidifies your awe of him, taking them down with his mighty bolts of lightning. The rest of it comes easily after that.

Often in times of refuge or after battle he will sit with you somewhere safe and surrounded by light, and simply talk with you, encourage you in all that you hope to do. You find that you enjoy such company, and that you like him a lot as an individual. After joining together to take down the nefarious Dragon Slayer and Executioner in Anor Londo of whom you'd heard many a bone-chilling tale, and had not been certain the two of you could truly defeat... you think you might even _love_ Solaire. You felt it like a heat ray as your eyes met with his across the expanse of the chamber, pillars crumbled around you, your foes lying lifeless between you with their blood on your blades. 

Feeling emotion like this... it is potent, and staggering. It obliterates you with its strength, eliminates your initial conception of this world. You find that you have something meaningful to live for, that there still _are_ things in this world that are worth living for, hiding in their little nooks of safety and delicate preservation. 

Sitting across from you at the bonfire, telling tales of past battles, those eyes of Solaire's look at you with their reflective sunlight; it sometimes feels like he is staining you with sunlight the more he looks. After his gaze diverts, you often feel the desire to reach under your armour and touch your own skin, as if you might find a lingering warmth that he left upon you, or the grooves of a painless brand. 

He takes notice of your soft expressions and fleeting glances: He teases you with accusations of feelings, but you take it in stride, hardly affronted by statements that are as true as a Hollow is insane. His teasing only further endears him to you. 

You don't realize it at the time, but you store this moment with him into your memories forever; until the day you meet your grave, and each time that you look back on it aches like a bruise.

-

Some time passes without him. 

In fact, the next time you find Solaire is very far from Anor Londo, at the Sunlight Altar, a place through which you have wandered before. It is light there, and as you have already come to learn, the light is safe. Safe and familiar. You'd taken shelter in this light when you'd only first arrived in Lordran, small and afraid and verging on Hollow. Entering it again gives you a recollective sense of calm, but you no longer feel you need this comfort, so you, now a hardened Warrior, discard it and shake it off like a dog shakes off the encumbrance of water. You carry a Claymore at your shoulder, and you've come to wield it quite well. It also carries a particular gleam to it which means you take good care of it. 

Solaire is standing at the crumbled remains of what must have once been a towering statue, the two legs the only things left upright. You don't spare it much of a glance before you greet Solaire with a surge of great affection, happy to see him alive and well, and he seems to feel the same way about you. He praises you for how far you've come, and you cannot help but to preen a little, a grin splitting your face. 

The two of you get to talking, and you slowly learn of what your dear friend has been occupying his days with. He is in very good spirits, which delights you at first, and he tells you earnestly about his continuous search for his Sun. It seems all that time you'd spent apart from him had not helped him to achieve his goal thus far, and to your own surprise you find your delight morphing into a distinctly unpleasant emotion... When you assess it, you are almost shocked to recognize it as pity. 

You feel _bad_ for Solaire, and that notion makes you feel much worse than you'd only felt moments ago. Your discomfort is also back, and an urge swells over you, an urge to return back to the shade, away from the Altar. You don't, because you love and respect Solaire, know him as a great man, an almost otherworldly entity who had once turned to you with nothing but kindness in your darkest hours. He doesn't require nor deserve pity. Still, you wish that Solaire would stop getting his own hopes up so high. It's a saddening experience to see them being dashed time and again no matter how hard he works. 

While he is telling his tales, you look into Solaire's eyes, peering through the slit of his helm. They are wide, and they still project that blazing sunlight that they always have, so pale blue, so bright that you think they could stain windows into the colour of fire. They swim with a zealous excitement in them like you've never seen before, even in the midst of battle, and the resulting storm swirling in the irises is enough to make you feel slightly ill just looking. Indeed, Solaire is a man of passion, you hesitantly think to yourself, casting him a wary smile to cover your uneasiness. 

Among his rambling, he invites you to join him on his duty to honour his Lord of the Sun, having proven your bravery and ability, and the silence you leave him with is uncomfortably long. You're reminded of Kaathe—who you have recently pledged an alliance to—and his odd and fascinating tales of the Dark. You cannot say that you've placed your complete trust and faith into the Serpent, but his words you have deeply contemplated. You'd never much considered the existence of the dark before, besides knowing it was where monsters lurked and the initial, innate fear of it you'd possessed. A fear which had been soothed by entering into the light. The light is secure and being in a state of security feels addictive at times. However, you often wish to stay among the light much longer than you actually allow yourself to. You must remind yourself that there are places to be discovered, Undead to meet, and battles to win, away from the light. 

The Sun is far from everything this world has to offer you. You wish Solaire would take interest in your values sometimes; not _everything_ has to revolve around his glorious, paternal Sun, though for him it seems that everything truly _does._ You try to tell yourself that this isn't a bad thing, and it does not make Solaire bad... You only wish things were somewhat different. You politely decline your friend's kindly offer and at last depart from the Sunlight Altar, determined to continue searching for your own purpose in this dreary, dreadful world.

-

Finding Solaire at the Altar again immediately strikes concern within you. 

It has been another long stretch of time since last you were here, speaking to him of the Sun and old stories of battle done in its honour. He is standing in nearly the same place as before, regarding the crumbled statue next to him with apparent apathy. You hadn't come around expecting him to be here, but there is no way you can simply walk past him once you've noticed him. Carefully you approach, hand resting on the hilt of your sheathed sword. From this angle, you cannot see his eyes at all. 

When he finally notices you, his greeting is low and dull, and this throws you off so thoroughly that you don't greet him in return. You wonder if he was discouraged earlier by your polite decline to help him serve the Lord of the Sun, but that doesn't seem to be what is bothering him at all once he has words with you. They seem to spill out of him, like he'd been waiting for someone to tell them to. 

His obsession with the Sun is as alive as ever, and you find yourself dismayed with how horribly it is affecting him, when before it had seemed to make him so bright and so hopeful. He laments in a tangent long and despairing, while you simply stand there and watch him with an expression of pity. In that moment, you truly wish that he could find his Sun, whatever it may be for him. 

When he finally looks at you, his eyes leak earnestness through the slot of his helm, still projecting that familiar light onto you, but you find yourself almost afraid to be touched by it, afraid to feel that odd sensation of being stained by it. Before, you would have basked in that proverbial spotlight, luxuriated in it, yet now... You nearly back away, but instead make yourself place your hand on Solaire's shoulder, and set about trying to talk him down from his stupor. But he remains trance-like, almost lethargic, and your attempts to pull him out of his mental state prove fruitless; he seemingly cannot be consoled. Your worry turns to a very real fear. 

_You'll find your Sun,_ you assure him, while at the same time secretly doubting such an occurrence. Solaire's Sun, from all that you've gathered, is a concept, a dream, or else something that once was but no longer is. Solaire won't find it, certainly not in the way that he has been searching for it. What will happen to him if he ever realizes that? You shy away from that thought. It seems natural that you stay with him late into the evening, even sleep next to him that night. But the next morning, you find him gone. You wonder when you will see him again.

-

You have the wry thought that you've learned many lessons from Solaire, both purposeful and accidental on his part. 

Solaire has taught you to keep going, to chase your destiny, seek your truth; however he’d phrase it at the time, he has taught you not to give up on your own life, no matter how hard it gets. But what you have learned through Solaire's own folly, is that there is a limit to the chase, and to protect your own life, you must not allow yourself to surpass that limit. Since that morning, you'd accepted that Solaire is no longer the man you once so intimately knew. He'd been changed by his own quest, and you had been changed by yours. Your paths diverged somewhere along the way, growing gradually further apart until you could lock hands no longer, a painful separation of clinging fingers. 

You feel as lost at first as a child separated from its mother, searching desperately for a familiar face. Then you feel resentment, because Solaire _chose_ this path, chose to leave you for his own dream. You hate that he loves his Sun more than he loves you, and you hate that you cannot make him love you more, or at least just as much. It burns all the more knowing that what he wants is something he cannot have, and what is being offered freely to him—your love, your companionship—is being discarded. You resent him, but still you care for him. Because of that, it aches _viscerally_ to come to understand how different his values are from yours. 

When you'd first come to meet him, you'd looked up to him, sought him out for protection and comfort via the light he radiated. Then you had wanted to be regarded as his equal, admiring his passion and devotion, inspired by his optimistic ways. Then you'd felt like you _were_ his equal, his friend, perhaps even his soulmate. You still cannot pinpoint when his brightness became cloying and uncomfortable, nor when his values became outright disturbing to you. The hardest lesson you've yet learned from Solaire is that indeed you cannot stay forever in that physical, palpable safety that is the light, but instead must take to the darkness time and time again, even if there is light and that light means safety. 

After a long journey of battles in the Demon Ruins, this jumble of thoughts is what you find yourself bombarded with as you stand before Solaire, gazing downwards at him as he sits upon the ground in the aftermath of having defeated a Demon Centipede. He has suddenly refused to keep going. The air itself is hot, the soil beneath you baked. Your armour feels like a furnace, and you wonder how long Solaire could last here, wonder if he even feels the heat of the surrounding lava. 

You cannot see his eyes, and this time he refuses to lift his hanging head to bare them to you, which stokes your resentment, even if you don't want that sunlit gaze to touch you and stain you anymore. He murmurs to himself, despairing of his fruitless searching, and you cannot help him and it _infuriates_ you. 

Still he refuses to stop speaking of his Sun. His wretched _Sun_ , you think venomously. Damn his Sun! Damn his worthless dream! You want so badly to strike sense into him; your grip spasms and tightens around your Claymore's hilt. Just as quickly, the fight leaves you, and suddenly you're more exhausted than you've ever quite felt before. Your grip weakens, and your hand falls away from the hilt, hanging loosely at your side. 

You stare down at Solaire, and all you can feel is sadness and mourning. _Why,_ Solaire is asking to himself. You wonder that too. Recognizing that standing here and trying to get through to him is doing no good, you instead promise him that you will come back for him later, but though you do truly mean what you say, somehow it still feels as if you are walking away from Solaire for the last time.

-

When you at last emerge from the inferno of Lost Izalith, bleeding and profusely sweating, yet calm as a receding tide or as the prelude to a storm... you have a sinking and sickening feeling in the pit of your gut, the sensation like an old friend now. 

Solaire is no longer where you last left him, where he'd sat so desolate and discouraged, muttering and mumbling to himself like he couldn't even hear you, where you'd _promised_ you'd come back for him. 

You walk slowly, until you stop in front of the dry patch of earth where he had been, standing and staring down at it with a dry throat and an unsteady heartbeat. Still you are calm. You know not where he could be, nor whether he even has the mental capacity to keep himself safe, but you must leave here, and return to the surface. The heat and burning luminescence of the lava feels like enough to drive you crazy in a fairly short time, and you hope not that Solaire has succumbed to such a fate. You hope he has found his own way out. That is all you can do, and it feels like he has slipped from your clutching, grasping fingers like water. You leave. Doing so feels heavy.

-

In your tired ascent from Izalith's depths to the Demon Ruins, you reach the entrance to a dark, root-infested hallway which you recall passing by before, although it had been a dead end last you had seen. What draws you to it, which had not been there before, is the presence of a flickering luminescence. 

You've ever been drawn to the light, you ruefully think to yourself, and descend towards the hallway along a large and twisting root. The light flickers, and it moves higher from the ground. This perplexes you for long moments, as you continue to descend, and that feeling in your gut, persistent since Lost Izalith, becomes abruptly sharper and tighter. Your eyes are wide now, and you cannot close them. You barely watch your own footing on the large root, as the light mesmerizes you like the bolt of a Lighting Spear. 

When you finally reach the bottom, the quiet _tup_ of your boot upon the floor seems terribly loud to you, until you hear the sudden drag of metal on stone, and the light raises even higher, until it is level with your eyes. The noise had caused you to startle backwards, as it came from the direction of the light, and now that light is directly in front of you, many paces away. 

Never has a light in the darkness elicited such wariness from you, its aura of malevolence drying your already dry throat. You take a hesitant step forward, and then another, and narrow your eyes to the sphere of light until they adjust. 

And then gravity shifts. Shock punches through your gut. Because it is _Solaire._

In the low-light of the hallway, Solaire's location is isolated perfectly by the brightness of the creature atop his head. Each sinewy limb seems to be embedded to Solaire's skull in a grotesque, parasitic display that sends your reality wayward. And he is looking at you, like he so often has, but those eyes are off... With his helm removed, you can see every inch of that handsome face you'd so rarely seen before, lit up from the glow of the Sunlight Maggot. As his eyes look at you, striking in the darkness, they project that signature sunlight and warmth-- now it is a blazing inferno. But that pale blue stare is utterly devoid of humanity. The eyes are glazed like they're blind, but he still gazes right at you-- right _through_ you. 

He speaks into the silence, and when his words echo from all angles, it's enough to make you cringe. His voice is thin, and it shakes with hysteria. Yet he speaks of triumph. You are frozen, yet he is on _fire._ He has found his Sun, yet you can only see an insect and madness where a man you respected once was. The shell of a man advances on you then, as Lightning collects in his one hand, and a Sunlight Blade glints off the Maggot's light in his other. He still looks at you, staining you. He _is_ the Sun.

You are no less than horrified at the sight of him, staggering back a step in your shock and devastation as you simultaneously draw your sword, though find yourself struggling to gather the will to hold its blade up against your dearest friend. Oh, Gods Above and Below, in that moment you know what you must do. Moments later, you are leaping out of the way of a searing Spear, the bolt lighting up the entire hallway for a brief moment as it collides with the stone floor. _Solaire, no!_ you cry. He is not listening. You steady your sword.

Looking upon his fully crazed state, you know you should feel hatred, yet you can only feel familiar old love, and the agony of its loss. You wish that you could have gotten to hold him close, to remove his helm for him… and gently kiss him just one time before this. Oh, how you'd wanted to kiss him before! But that can never happen now. You take aim with your blade.

Of course you still love him, of course you still adore him. You always will. You have loved him since you met him, and you still love him like you've loved no other as you drive your blade through his heart... and tears and blood flood your vision.

As you kill him, as he slides from your blade and to his knees, you remember him in your mind’s eye, turning to you on that fateful day that you'd met him, his helm outlined by the halo of a setting sun, so pure and radiant. The halo given to him by the Sunlight Maggot is such a crude reconstruction. _My sun is setting,_ Solaire whimpers out at your feet, as if he'd just read your thoughts, and your ragged breathing stops with his. There is only wretched stillness, and silence.

 _Oh, Solaire..._ you think hopelessly. _Why...?_ But you know already that it is not Solaire's fault; it is your own. For being human. For coming to love him. For trusting his safety in this world of insanity. One so bright was never meant to last. So much had taught you that.

Being left in the quiet devastation of the aftermath, your boots and your Claymore soaked with Solaire's blood, might have felt like something worse than any horrible feeling you'd ever known in a world filled with horrors. Alone. That's what you are. Alone again, just like in the beginning. For the first time in a long time, you are afraid again like a child suddenly without its mother.

You haven't looked at Solaire since he'd fallen. You make yourself, and seeing him still there, lying motionless on the floor... It ruins you, and you turn away again almost violently as tears fall down your cheeks. You dimly notice that the Sunlight Maggot has unlatched from its perch and is crawling mindlessly around on the other side of the hallway. You briskly approach it and stamp down on it hard, and its meager light goes out. You cannot leave that dark hallway fast enough. You never see Solaire again.

-

You're not sure how much has passed by the time you find yourself back in the Abyss. It must have been years or minutes. Logically it couldn’t have been either, but time no longer holds precedence. It doesn't matter. Moving forward, that is what matters. Returning to Kaathe with the final Lord Soul, the Bed of Chaos, that is what now holds precedence. 

A cold determination has overtaken you, and you think that you finally know what it feels like to be completely ready for something. You are ready for the Dark. You can say this now without hesitance: Grasping onto a dwindling light source like a child to its mother is a hopeless endeavour. You must leave its comfort for good. You must open the doors to the Kiln of the First Flame and snuff out the cinders.

And you'll be okay. Because it was Solaire of Astora who taught you to keep going. For him, you will usher in the Age of Dark.


End file.
